Chapter 162: Rose Factory

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In-game Tang Er fights to open his eyes.

A vast field of rose petals sweeps from the sky, filling the horizon with vibrant, full-colored flowers, the sky is the dark color of the night, and as the rose field moves in, a modern factory appears out of place in the background of the countryside town.

A huge brass still is placed at the entrance of the factory, and a white-painted wooden sign is hung next to it, which reads "Dried Leaf Rose Factory" in both Chinese and English.

Tang Er's breath stopped for a moment, and he subconsciously looked to the very top of the factory - it was empty, except for some fresh roses in beanstalks basking in the moonlight, their petals stretched out in the moonlight, their juices brewing in the fleshy, rose-colored petals with a maddeningly addictive aroma.

This is the same Bai Liu who stood at the top and asked him [Rose, does it smell good? of the factory.

In all the timelines, Tang Er fights have never seen this tertiary game.

He knew that the dried rose leaf Wa Si must have a solution in one of the games in the system, but Tang Er hit, no matter how frantically he swiped through the game, never made it to this game.

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It's like there's some kind of presence that blocks his access to the game, teasing him, so Tang Er has long since given up hope that he'll ever be able to swipe a game related to Rose Dried Leaf Wa Si.

But this time, after Tang Er's despair, he actually chased Bai Liu into the game by mistake.

[System Alert: Player Tang Er hit the factory gate and triggered the game's main quest]

[System tip: Player's identity is the lowest rose picker in the dry wild rose factory, you need to work hard in the factory, and promote to the top perfumer by performance, after becoming a perfumer, player can drive away the previous factory manager and become the new factory manager].

[When the perfume factory manager is born, the player who becomes the factory manager passes the game, and the game ends when the factory manager is born]

Now, please enter the factory and start working today!

Meanwhile, Bai Liu, hiding behind the factory, is depressed to have his main quest confirmed once again. Liu Jiayi, who is drinking the antidote to heal herself, still has blood on her body, but her face is much better and she is not bleeding from the gunshot wound on her body.

After Liu Jiayi confirmed her main quest, she took a glance at Bai Liu's not-so-good-looking face and turned around a bit awkwardly to mutter in a small voice, "...... I've told you not to just go into a level 3 game, I've managed to get you back, and you've come to give it away yourself, and you're still giving me a pose of face ......"

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Bai Liu glumly swept a glance at Liu Jiayi, "It's not because of you, it's because of this mission."

"What's wrong with this mission? The mortality rate of a level three game card is by limiting the number of people who can pass ah, I reminded you before I came in ......" Liu Jiayi soon also entered a state of thinking, she put away the bottle of antidote and frowned, "The mortality rate of a level three game is between eighty percent and Ninety, there are six players in this game, it's normal that only one can survive, but it's not like there aren't any openings to be exploited in a level three game."

"But this game limited only become the factory director of the player can pass, we came in when we looked at the time, the only nearby only this one rose dried leaves Wa Si factory, so the pass conditions somehow stuck, can only go one step to see one step first, but it can be understood that you do not like the main mission of the three levels of the game, the flexibility to reduce the difficulty of the elevated ......"

Bai Liu is rare not in the state, eyes somewhat wandering: "...... again part-time, why into the game is still doing social animal, I do not like to be exploited ......"

Liu Jiayi: "......"

You are becoming mourning because of this!!!

Liu Jiayi expressionlessly climbed onto the decorative brass stein and smacked Bai Liu on the back of the head, "Troubleshooter, cheer me up ah! First take care of your pursuer that Captain What's-his-name, he's definitely chasing you into the game, that guy's got some serious fighting skills, you'd better figure out how to get us through this level 3 game fast!"

Bai Liu is slapped against the wall by Liu Jiayi and doesn't move a muscle.

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Liu Jiayi: "......"

Liu Jiayi grabbed Bai Liu's head and pulled it out, roaring, "Don't play dead to avoid working! If you brought me into this game, you're responsible for getting me out! Give me some adult man's responsibility, Bai Liu!"

Bai Liu slowly pulled his head out of the wall and looked at Liu Jiayi with a wan gaze, "Does anyone pay me to work here?"

Liu Jiayi : "...... Of course there can't be ah what are you thinking?"

"Oh." Bai Liu slowly buries his head back down again and says in a jarring voice, "I'm not going to fight then, I've just been semi-forced into a very losing ten year deal and now I'm going to be asked to work for nothing, I need to get my blood back, I can't."

Bai Liu has the look of a modern-day Grundy who, after being forced to leave his inheritance to his son, realizes that he's not dead and is in no shape to lose his money-it's clear that he hasn't gotten over Lu Yizhan's ten-year hot pot deal.

Liu Jiayi stepped on Bai Liu's shoulder and pulled this social animal who was avoiding part-time work out of the house with all his might, cursing as he did so, "Men can't just say they can't do it! Get up and work!"

After realizing that nothing could make this social animal, immersed in the depression of losing money, recover, Liu Jiayi had to offer a killing move: "You work part-time, I'll pay you a salary, one hundred dollars an hour, is that OK?"

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Bai Liu, who had buried his head in the wall, turned his head without hesitation, looked straight at Liu Jiayi with both eyes, and stretched out his hand to her, not at all bashful: "Deal, pay first and then work."

Liu Jiayi: "......"

Damn, this kind of Bai Liu is just waiting for her to pay money, counting her feeling ......

Is this man so stingy? Counting the money of an eight-year-old girl?

Liu Jiayi cursed in his heart, the surface of the eight winds do not move to pull out the money to Bai Liu, Bai Liu Shi Ran took the money, straightened out his clothes, and returned to the appearance of a human-like workers: "Let's go, first go to the factory to check the program."

"Wait!" Liu Jiayi pulled back Bai Liu who was walking forward, the tone of her voice was a bit helpless, "Are you listening to what I'm saying to you or not, that Captain Tang is also chasing you into the game, you're going directly to the factory to find an NPC to receive a quest, you might bump into him, his skill weapon gun is very powerful, it can be used in reality, if you bump into him he will definitely kill you without saying a word! will definitely kill you without saying a word!"

Bai Liu took Liu Jiayi's hand, his expression faint, "He wouldn't have killed me the moment he entered this game."

Liu Jiayi was stunned, "Why?"

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"The Rose Factory is the stage of the game that someone, or of course, it may not be a human thing specially dedicated for Tang Er to fight and me." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, his eyes obscure, "In this game called The Rose Factory, there must be hidden that secret that can save all those who are contaminated by perfume, the same way that the bonus prop of that idol's monster book can save children poisoned by the Blood Lingzhi in The Welfare House of Love."

"And Tang Er hit thought that the decryption core of the game that hid this secret was in my hands, he thought that I was the one who knew how to pass this game, and just for that, he couldn't bear to kill me until the game was passed and Tang Er hit got what he wanted to get."

"--The antidote to save those he wishes to save is near at hand, and I believe that this righteous Captain Tang should not have the same madness that he had before, and the courage to take more than a thousand men with him to die with me."

Bai Liu commented nonchalantly, with a bit of a flirtatious-like smile in his tone, "After all, my life, in the eyes of this Captain Tang, should not be as precious as that Vice-Captain Su of his."

He holds Liu Jiayi's hand as he walks beside the rose fields of this rustic town, around the factory's stills and past the double-opening wrought-iron front door that has been opened.

A wooden plaque hangs over the front door that reads - [Welcome, Rose Factory].

Bai Liu held Liu Jiayi's hand and went inside, where there was a huge, open-air workspace, with fresh roses just picked from the fields scattered all over the ground, and someone squatting on the ground separating the stems, leaves and petals of the roses that had been mixed up into a pile, and then sorting them into different categories.

The grounds were lined with huge, working, constantly hot and white steam copper furnaces, beside which people were constantly stirring the rose petals mixed into a mass with steel shovels, and it looked like a flourishing work scene, but there was something peculiar in the appearance of the people working, and the hours of the work were not quite right, for it was now quite evidently late at night by the look of the sky.

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The men who were working wore black protective suits with elastic bandages tightened around their wrists and collars, white numb gloves and black gummy tube boots, and black sandy bucket hats, and from their attire did not look like they were dealing with roses, but rather looked like researchers working with viruses in a dangerous laboratory or beekeepers.

These people stopped Bai Liu the moment he went in with Liu Jiayi.

The staff handed Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi two sets of identical protective suits as if they were tailor-made, and raised their heads in hoarse, cracked voices, looking at the two uninvited guests with straight eyes, and even with a certain amount of hatred and vigilance: "Wear protective suits when you enter this place, and don't let the odor of your bodies contaminate the smell of the roses, do you understand, newbie? Understand?"

At such a close distance, Bai Liu could clearly see that under the black veil, the face of the man who had handed him the veil, or the worker who could no longer be considered a human being, was deeply chapped, and then along the chasm appeared pieces of black, rotting, outwardly curving flesh, as if a rose were blooming along the texture under his eyes.

And in the eyes of the worker looking straight at Bai Liu, there was a dying rose of deep red with blackened edges - much like the one on his face.

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Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi looked at each other and silently took the full protective suits handed to them by the workers, put them on, and walked inside under each other's guidance.

The worker turns to Bai Liu as he walks inside, describing the three different workshops in the factory, but Bai Liu's attention is clearly drawn to something else.

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As the man walked, the face in his protective suit rustled with the sound of blades falling as he moved, and then what fell was barreled under his feet by himself, the smell of mushy flesh and bloody wetness faintly filtering through between the actions, but the man himself seemed unconcerned as he continued to describe the construction and rules of the factory:

"...... There are three workshops within the perfume factory, respectively, just you see the petals of the concoction of the distillation workshop, now we are in the purification of essential oil workshop, and the most core of the perfume workshop, the perfume workshop you are not yet qualified to go, only perfumers are qualified to work in this workshop ......"

"We are recruiting four types of workers here, flower pickers who are responsible for picking seasonal roses, this is the lowest level of workers, newcomers who have just come here start from here, those who have outstanding performance in flower picking will be promoted to the petal processing workshop to become a processor, and those who have good performance in the processing workshop will be promoted to the purification workshop to become a full-fledged plant laborer, and it is only at this level that you will be qualified to learn the perfume mixing Knowledge ......"

"And the factory worker with the strongest learning ability and the highest talent for perfumery who can prioritize the perfume can become a perfumer, that's a heavenly honor, tsk, but it's a bit too far to talk about that with you newcomers ......"

Bai Liu observed his surroundings while listening to the npc droning on and on about the factory before finally asking, "So how do I become the director of this factory?"

This worker stopped talking about how to get promoted to perfumer.

That worker turned his head violently, the cheekbones on his face under the black veil were faintly visible after the blood and flesh were stripped away, his lowered tone was eerie and horrifying, "Factory director? The factory director is not something you can be promoted to become, he holds the core technology of the factory's perfume and the method of cultivating dried leaf roses, and it is impossible to pass these things on, if you want to become the factory director, wait until you have these things as well."

Bai Liu asked in a different way, "And how many plant managers have you had in total?"

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"Eight terms." The worker said.

Bai Liu gave a faint, oh-so-subtle sigh and asked, "And how did they change hands?"

The worker's face turned hard as he realized what Bai Liu was trying to ask, which caused him to pause eerily for a moment before answering, "...... When the last factory manager disappeared, the next factory manager who possessed the perfume formula and the rose cultivation method automatically took over."

Bai Liu asked and stopped - it seems that this is still a revolt-style rotation, the last factory manager disappeared may not be simple, and the next factory manager will not be too simple, this [perfume formula] and [rose cultivation] method is equivalent to the seal of the state, whoever gets it, whoever takes office.

Continuing inside, the low, sunless interior of the factory gradually became more spacious to the left and right, with assorted aluminum cooling tubes embedded in the walls around it, and water swishing and flowing rapidly through them.

A long array of distilling and drying devices lay on the concrete floor, the housings of the instruments having been tinted a light pink approximating a rose, glowing in the flickering dim light - normal roses weren't so corrosive as to color metal.

Even with Bai Liu's protective clothing on, there was a strong aroma of roses that filled the air, and in the various devices that were being worked on, in the pipes of the glass units, rose-colored drops of oil could be seen flowing slowly through the pipes before dripping from the spout into a fist-sized beaker.

"We are the only factory in the world that can produce [Dry Leaf Rose Wa Si] perfume, and the perfume that we produce is shipped from here to the whole world, and everyone in the world is madly obsessed with this perfume, and can't survive without it, but it hasn't been smooth sailing for us to get to where we are today."

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The worker inexplicably introduced Bai Liu in a proud tone of honor and shame, "On the wall to your left you can see the history of our factory, all of which made the local news paper."

Bai Liu's eyes shifted to the left, and he saw an entire wall plastered with various old newspapers, placed in a glass case, with quite a few trophies on it, and some golden certificates like [The Most Outstanding Perfume of 202X] and [Top Ten Enterprises of the Year] or something like that.

"...... Ten years ago, when Dried Leaf Rose Wa Si was still strictly banned, our factory was almost seized at one point, but a big explosion that almost completely destroyed our factory made the aroma of Dried Leaf Rose Wa Si waft to a big city in the neighborhood, and overnight, millions of people all began to become enamored with the perfume, a good perfume can have such a charm that it brought the factory back from the dead and grew it back to its peak!"

"Now that the whole world is using this perfume and demand exceeds supply, dried rose leaves Wa Si have become more precious than gold!"

As the worker chattered on, Bai Liu, who was moving forward, saw a familiar face on the wall of newspapers, and he suddenly stopped somewhere in the window.

His eyes fell without deviation on the old, yellowed newspaper taped to the edge of the window, a paper of some years old, with the headline printed prominently in bold, black letters on the upper left:

[A leak at a perfume-processing chemical plant on the outskirts of Mirror City, caused by inadequate protective measures, injured 139 workers and left 17 police officers investigating the scene unconscious after sniffing the gas.]

Bai Liu's gaze shifted downward, and underneath the headline was a large black-and-white news photo of two familiar faces - both in uniform, lying on a stretcher, seemingly delirious, about to be lifted into an ambulance, obviously caught in the crossfire by the gases leaking from the perfume factory.

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Liu Jiayi also recognized one of them, her eyes widened slightly as she walked to the window, standing on her tiptoes to get closer to look at the police officer lying on a stretcher unconscious from the explosion on top of the photo, and after gazing at it for a long time, she clicked on the system panel without saying a word:

【System tip: Does player Liu Jiayi use 600 points to open the mute space of the small TV, the words spoken by you and the players within one meter around you will be muted before being broadcast to the small TVs watched by the audience】.

[System alert: The transaction has been completed, players can now speak freely!

Liu Jiayi After she finished processing, she turned her head to Bai Liu, her tone tightening, "Isn't ...... that policeman Lu Yizhan?"

Bai Liu gave a nonchalant hmmm, "The other one's name is Su Yang."

He looked to the date on the paper - it was the day after they entered the game date.

Now the connection between this Rose Factory game and reality is clear - it's a copy of a game that hasn't had a chance to log into reality yet, and the way that game logged in was this explosion.

This copy officially begins more than a decade after this explosion, which is now.

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The huge leak that triggered this copy of the game into reality, and that started to popularize the dried rose leaves Wa Si all over the world, happened the day after Bai Liu entered the game.

A game usually takes a day, that means ......

Bai Liu looked at the exact point in time when the explosion was reported in the newspaper - around 4:15 AM, which was basically the time Bai Liu had just entered the game, with a margin of error of no more than ten minutes.

This means that whether Tang Er fights or Bai Liu is the one who passes the game, as soon as they go out, all they will see is Lu Yizhan or Su Yang being hit by the explosion, contaminated by the dried rose leaves Wa Si, and about to wither and die.

Even if the prop reward they get for passing the game might be able to save the contaminated population, this leak that caused massive contamination of the population has already happened.

And the rewards given for passing the game, or the props for saving the contaminated people are limited, like the [Blood Ganoderma] that was rewarded to Bai Liu in the last round of the game, which just happened to be enough to save six children.

According to the person behind the curtain's arrangement for them, they will definitely be refreshed out of the game "Rose Factory" after they pass the level, and it will be very difficult to refresh it out again, that is, to prevent them from getting the props repeatedly.

Unsurprisingly, even if they got the props that could free the contaminated people, that would probably be just enough to save the existing thousand or so contaminated people.

But if this big bang becomes widespread, there's a good chance there won't be enough props to free the population.

According to Bai Liu's understanding of Lu Yizhan and Su Yang, these two people are very typical of the character of public justice, if the general public has not been completely saved, they will never use props that can save themselves.

This should be the situation that the one who arranged everything behind the scenes wanted to see, he wanted to laugh and see - Bai Liu and Tang Er fighting in front of their most important friends' hospital beds, watching them wither and wither without being able to do anything about it, or even killing each other to fight against each other, or sacrificing their own friends to save their own lives of an innocent man and turn into an evil man whom their own friends revile.

What a wonderful, wonderful arrangement, laid out without even realizing it.

Bai Liu remembered what he had heard before entering the game, that Su Yang was going to survey the perfume-producing factory the next day.

And after all that happened tonight, Lu Yizhan, this fool, in order to prove that this Rose Dried Leaf Wa Si has nothing to do with him, and in order to understand what happened to Bai Liu, and in order to prove Bai Liu's innocence, Lu Yizhan will surely take the initiative to come along with the Third Detachment to investigate the truth of this case - -This is the perfect chess game that the person behind the scenes wants to see.

The chips are placed end to end on the scales of reality, the gamers are in the ring of the game, and the onlookers are hidden in the abyss and the bottom of the sea, egregiously watching the drama that has been choreographed by themselves.

The show is about to begin - Bai Liu seems to hear someone whispering pleasantly and frantically in his ear.

Original Translations: Crafted with Care, No Unauthorized Reposting Allowed.

Published at: 06/12/2024 11:00

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